1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to passenger vehicle safety devices and more particularly to a vehicle occupant protection system by, for example, pivoting front and rear seats upward rearward in case of a front crash so as to greatly reduce the risk of serious injury and even death.
2. Description of Related Art
It is known that a vehicle occupant may continue to move forward due to inertia force when a crash occurs. As a result, seated passengers may suffer injury or even death.
Conventionally, seat belt and air bag are the most widely used safety devices within a passenger vehicle. For a seat belt, it can protect a seat passenger from abrupt jolts when a crash occurs. For an air bag, it can inflate automatically within an automobile at the impact of a collision to protect passengers from being thrown forward.
However, serious injury and even death still occur in traffic accidents even seat belts and/or air bags are properly installed and used in automobiles. This means that seat belts and air bags used in combination with the seat belts still have many drawbacks.
One important thing to be considered is that vehicle occupants should be pulled away from any hard objects or surfaces inside a vehicle as far as possible in a crash. Thus, continuing improvements in the exploitation of vehicle occupant protection system are constantly being sought.